


Veins

by unknowableroom_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Drama, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-16
Updated: 2007-08-05
Packaged: 2019-01-19 22:48:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 2,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12419883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unknowableroom_archivist/pseuds/unknowableroom_archivist
Summary: [ exploration ] character dissection of a harem of personalities, both beloved and scorned, admired and feared.





	1. Laughter

**Author's Note:**

> Note from ChristyCorr, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Unknowable Room](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Unknowable_Room), a Harry Potter archive active from 2005-2016. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project after May 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Unknowable Room collection profile](http://www.archiveofourown.org/collections/unknowableroom).

It’s odd the way laughter can resound in a decrepit old hallway years after it originally vociferated.

Minerva McGonagall sucked in a harsh breath, reaching out to place one hand on the wall beside her. For a moment there, in the middle of her rounds, she’d felt the sensations of time travel. 

The question of whether it had been in her mind or if she’d really heard it remained to be answered. 

_I am getting too old for this._

She studied the cracks in the wall beneath her hand. It, like her, like this castle, like so many wizards and witches of the time, had been bruised, battered, and broken. These walls told a story, a story she had spent her lifetime reading and adding chapters to, a story she didn’t know the ending to, a story she sometimes doubted even had an ending. 

She loved these crumbling walls, but at the same she hated them, hated herself. She was crumbling. 

It had been too long of a fight and Minerva McGonagall, despite having been on the winning end of it, felt as if she had given up. 

“Alright there, Professor?”

The Head Girl had come around the corner, her intelligent gaze concerned and curious. 

“Yes, yes, just tired, I’ll be off to bed now, finish your rounds and do the same, I’ll see you tomorrow in class,” Minerva replied hurriedly, gathering up her robes and rushing off down the dimly lit corridor, leaving a confused student in her wake. 

But she didn’t head to her bedchambers, she went to her classroom. She plopped down, in the chair she’d been sitting in for years. She laid her wand down carefully, shook out the arms of her robes, and folded her hands neatly in front of her. 

“That’ll be two detentions, I’m afraid, you know what time class begins.” 

Her voice rang out determinedly in the empty classroom, but she didn’t feel any more like herself. Sighing, she buried her face in her arms, letting out a loud groan. She took several long, deep breaths, and when she lifted her head, she let out a loud yelp. 

She blinked and the images disappeared. For a moment there, a class from a long time ago, a class she’d never forget as long as she lived, had appeared before her eyes, their youthful faces beaming at her full of eagerness to learn, to laugh, to live. 

She blinked rapidly, trying to convince herself she wasn’t losing her mind. She had, after all, been fairly positive she’d heard Sirius Black’s barking laugh earlier in the hallway. And now here she was, hallucinating that his class year was sitting before her. But Black was locked away in Azkaban, and that class had graduated years and years earlier. Some of the people she had pictured were no longer living, victims of the war. 

And when the Head Girl had come around the corner before, Minerva could have sworn Lily Evans was the one asking if she were alright. 

If she closed her eyes, she felt like she was back in that time. The wrinkles smoothed away, the cracks in the walls tightened, and the laughter grew a little louder. 

James Potter had always tried her patience. That was the only way to describe him.

He and his partner-in-crime, Sirius, had been among the brightest wizards to come through her doorway…on the days that they bothered to show up. 

Students think they go undetected when not in the classroom, but the professors always know more about them. After seven years of teaching a class all she knew, or all that they possessed the capacity to learn, she knew more than just their skills and talents. She knew their personalities, their strengths, their weaknesses. 

She knew that Sirius Black and James Potter and Peter Pettigrew had found out about Remus Lupin’s secret, and, as a result, had a secret of their own. Had she not admired their strong bond so much, she might have taken it upon herself to find out more about that secret. 

Then there was Remus, with his kind, dazed eyes and reasonable mind. It was his sense of morals and the moments, however infrequently they occurred, in which she witnessed his attempts to control his friends, that had made her recommend him to Dumbledore as a prefect. 

“He’d make a good Head Boy alongside Evans,” had been her exact words. And while Dumbledore had agreed about Evans, James Potter had made Head Boy. 

She’d had her doubts. Oh, he’d taken Quidditch Captain seriously enough, but that hadn’t surprised her. Head Boy took responsibility and maturity, qualities she wasn’t sure he possessed. For the entirety of seventh year, she sat back and watched, inwardly pleased and proud, as he proved her wrong. 

For the year, as well, she had watched Potter and Evans become closer. She’d seen the signs years earlier, for no one could deny the way they sparked when together, but that year marked a new beginning. When James and Lily had entered the Great Hall with fingers entwined for the first time, Minerva had simply held out her hand. Filius Flitwick, grumbling all the while that she was not allowed to gloat for the rest of the year, had dropped a Galleon onto her palm. 

Minerva had simply smirked. “You knew better, Filius. You know I know my students.”

Remembering those words, Minerva let out a long sigh. She hadn’t known anything, she now realized. For she would have bet not just a Galleon, but her whole life savings, on the belief that Sirius Black would rather die than see anything happen to James and Lily. And yet, there he was in Azkaban, serving a life sentence for handing them over to the Dark Lord and for killing Pettigrew and a streetful of Muggles. 

Some days she felt deep down in her bones that there had to have been some kind of mistake. She pictured those four boys, could practically see the bonds of life and love between them back during their Hogwarts days, particularly James and Sirius, and could not imagine a situation in which Sirius would betray them. She remembered the Order meetings, the missions James and Sirius had gone on together, the fact that it had been Sirius who had calmed Lily down when James had forbid her to help out once she was pregnant, the way nothing, not graduation, not war, not marriage could drag James and Sirius apart. She knew, during those moments of reminiscing, that Sirius Black would never have betrayed his best friend. 

But there was the fact that Sirius had been their Secret Keeper. And Pettigrew’s finger. And Black’s crazy, maniacal laughter. Perhaps that was the final clue, after all. Something in Sirius had snapped, he had lost it, his marbles had spilled all over the place, he had gone _insane_ and joined Voldemort’s forces. 

That had to be it. War does things to a person. Sirius, it seemed, had been both a victim and a sinner.  

She remembered the funerals, the brief moments of sorrow in the middle of such raucous celebration. One person wasn’t rejoicing. Minerva would never forget the vacancy in Remus Lupin’s gaze. She thought about what it would be like to learn that your best friend had killed your two other best friends, sending himself to prison for life, and understood why Remus looked like he would never smile again. 

These new classes of hers had no notion of war and what it meant. The oldest ones had been mere toddlers when Voldemort had reigned. They didn’t know what it felt like to have a heart not just break, but shatter. They didn’t know that if another war were to break out, she would send them off into the world with terror in her heart, and she would cry over each and every name of theirs that she read in the Obituaries. 

But it was not the same, she thought. No class could mean as much to her as Black and Potter and Evans and Lupin and Pettigrew and all the rest of that generation had. She thought of James and Sirius in the back of her classroom, James ruffling up his hair and Sirius leaning back in his chair on two legs, ignoring Remus’s warnings that he’d crack his head open. She thought of Lily, her long red hair flipping over her shoulder every time she turned around to glare at James for charming paper airplanes to zoom around her head. She thought of Peter, his desperation to be included so fierce that it could not be ignored. She heard their laughter, resonating in the empty classroom, in the hallway, in the Great Hall, out on the grounds, in the dormitories. It had followed them, they wore it on their sleeves, it _had been_ them. Their laughter had been so strong and resilient that it would not fade, taking up shelter in the cracks of the walls to haunt the corridors for years. 

One day, Minerva swore to herself, she would be able to move on, to push thoughts of them to the back of her mind, to forget that this war and that generation had ever even happened. One day, she was certain, her soul would mend. 

A corner of an important-looking piece of paper stuck out from underneath a stack of essays. It was getting close to the end of the year, a class was graduating soon. She always got a little emotional during this part of the school term. 

She pulled the paper out, realizing it was the class list for the first years that would be arriving in September. Smiling slightly, she allowed her eyes to scan the list, realizing she hadn’t yet looked it over. 

And there it was, halfway down the list: the reason she could not forget, at least not anytime soon. 

_Potter, Harry._

“I guess,” Minerva said out loud to the empty classroom, “that the joke has always been on me.”

 

**I’ve been working on this piece for about two weeks now and…….it’s not that I don’t like it….I’m just not quite sure it’s the way I wanted it to be. Hmm. Let me know what you think, please.**

**Thanks for reading,**

**lark**


	2. Ties

**Disclaimer: Nothing is mine.**

 

 

 

    She finds that she is both pleased and dismayed, ultimately contradicting herself. She had not truly _meant_ to do it, though she’d been trying. Honestly, she had simply overestimated him, that’s what it came down to. 

    Bellatrix Lestrange simultaneously regretted and celebrated murdering Sirius Black.

    Of course, she’d done it in the Dark Lord’s name. There were reasons upon reasons for which she’d committed the crime. Surely, now that wretched boy who had so charmingly lived would feel increasingly alone in the world that continued abandoning him. It had been revenge for the smudge on the family name. It had been exhilaration, finally _freedom_ , dueling, sparring. Even as Sirius had fallen through the veil, Bellatrix had grinned triumphantly, a maniacal laugh escaping her, crazed eyes widening with delight. 

    It was only later, when she and Lucius returned to the Malfoy manor, that she quietly grasped what had transpired. Narcissa’s cold eyes regarded her calmly, the same trusting and loyal gaze she’d known all her life, yet somehow much emptier than she remembered. There was still that curious excitement coursing through her veins, the high she remembered from her Death Eater days, but she hesitated to truly revel in it. In her mind, she could easily picture the Black family tree, with Sirius’s branch conspicuously burned away. She ran her fingers gently over the mark on her forearm, considering.

    The places she’d been and the heinous acts she’d committed were irrelevant. Bellatrix’s heart, despite arguments against its existence, would always beat Black blood.

 

**Thank you for reading, as always. A little something different from me, I’m not sure how it turned out.**


	3. Muggle Loving

**The Witch Who Loved A Muggle**

 

His protectiveness amuses her. He does not realize that she could destroy the dangers he fears with a simple flick of her wrist. He does not understand that he is the fragile one. She humors him. 

Sometimes she lies awake next to him, watching the way his chest rises and falls. She cannot ever quite destroy the feeling that one day he will suffer because of what she is. 

He comes in from mowing the lawn one afternoon, covered in dirt and sweat and smelling of grass. She smiles, kisses him, watches him hurry up the stairs to shower, looks around at the life he’s built for her. 

He wakes up that night to her crying, tears streaming, snot flowing in the most unflattering of ways. Anxious, he holds her until she calms. 

“I love you,” she says. “I _choose_ you.”

And she pulls out her wand and snaps it in half. 


	4. Sisters

**SPOILERS. SPOILERS. SPOILERS. Yes, there are spoilers ahead, BE CAREFUL!!!!!!!!!!!**

**Some jerk ruined part of the book for me, I’m still bitter. So, again, SPOILERSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS AHEADDDDDDDDDDDDDDD! =)**

**Oh, wow. My Harry Potter journey has ended. I’m….upset and yet thrilled. Drained, yet full. Disbelieving…and yet certain. All is well, yes?**

**I’m thinking it’s time for me to join in on the forums? I really need to talk about the book, I’m _bursting!_ **

**Okay, for the final time, SPOILERSSSSSSSSS!**

 

Andromeda had thought that nothing could ever quite pierce through to shock her ever again. 

So it is with some hesitation that she musters up the energy to widen her eyes, to slacken her jaw, to double take quite comically. She stares out the window, certain her mind has begun its slow descent into insanity, unable to cope any longer. She watches for a long moment, tears beginning their flow down her cheeks. Very calmly, she places Teddy down in his high chair, straps him in, grimaces distractedly at him. 

And then sprints to the door, throwing it open, flinging herself upon the person who has just set foot on the stoop. 

“Oh, it’s dreadful! First Regulus, then Sirius, _Ted, darling Ted and my Dora_ , Remus, and even…even Bellatrix….” 

And she sobs, heart breaking with every gasp of her chest, and Narcissa Malfoy, after a brief moment’s pause, wraps her arms around her sister. 

“We have each other. From now on, we’ll always have each other.” 


	5. Heart's Home

**SPOILERSSSSSSSSSSSSS! =)**

**Hoping it’s all understood that this fic contains spoilers now. =)**

 

Lying in bed next to her, memorizing her beautiful face, the decision before him seemed heart-wrenchingly impossible to make. Even in the depths of slumber, even with the tumult of war falling down around them, even with their daughter in the midst of danger, a serene smile curved her lips into a peaceful expression. How could he take that smile away from her?

And yet, how could he let the Death Eaters destroy it? He couldn’t, that’s what it came down to in the end. 

He debated, for a few tense moments, the choice of a letter or not. It would take pages and pages to proclaim all that he felt for her, for their life, for what was between them now. It hurt him to realize that their paths now laid in different directions. He hesitated, then scribbled a few poignant words, their meaning managing to capture most, if not all, of what he wished to convey.

_My heart will always be here, with you_. 

Sighing heavily, Ted Tonks disappeared into the darkness, trying valiantly to ignore the suspicion that he would never see his wife again. 


	6. Golden Memory

**Harry/Ginny, Harry/Golden Snitch (just kiddingggg…!)**

 

“Some days I think you love that Snitch more than you love me.” 

Ginny’s voice is teasing, meant to break him free of his daydream. Harry glances up, smiling, letting go of the tiny winged ball so that it flutters around them.

“Some days I do.”

Ginny reaches out to smack him, but he catches her hand, holds it in his own. 

“I did have a rather nice snogging session with it, remember?” 

Ginny rolls her eyes. “If you’re trying to make me jealous, you’re failing miserably.”

He smiles again, but he’s looking at the Snitch. He had never played Quidditch again, besides the occasional backyard game with Ginny in between her professional seasons, but he realized once in a while just how much he missed it. 

Watching the Snitch buzz around their heads, he thinks of what a surprising and significant role it had played in Voldemort’s demise, in his own life. He pulls Ginny closer to him, wrapping his arms around her. 

It reminds him too much, too painfully. The Golden Snitch. But some days he thinks about how much worse it would be to forget. 


	7. Strength of Glance

Staring down, observing, he almost feels sorry for Snape. He finds it eerily easy to place himself in the man’s shoes.

 

Had he survived while his wife died, James Potter is not sure he would have been strong enough to ever look Harry in the eye.


End file.
